Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1887-05-01

TIev had an album filed with news
paper scraps-of course, all eulogistic
notices of his pictures, The nasty
critics, the sneering, or ridiculing
ones, found their way silently to the
waste-paper basket and lit the lire.
| Mary thanked heaven every night
that she had found such husband,
his mother that she had so good son.
As for him, he was very happy. Mary
was the best OF wives, and he was so
content with his lot that he hardly
Qrieved over what was her one secret
sorrow-that they had no children.
He would have liked son to inherit
his genius she yearned for daughter
to be blessed as she was. For the rest
they Lad no troubles, or only very few.
Sometimes he felt rs il he were rather
unappreciatcd that with all his e.
forts art was not purified that the
public taste was growing coarse and
depiayed. They passed his large Bibli-
cal or allegorical pictures by and flock
ed to some realistic, horrible, or SEN
sual picture-these were his epithets
for them. Perhaps the world would
not have echoed them.
The papers had a nasty trick OF
sneering at his "smo0th sentimental
;sm," his impossible anatomy" aud
so on. He only thought the world
growing bad but it distressed him n
little to see The people led astray and
pure art despised Mary felt it, too,
but she managed to soothe him at homo
with her boundless sympathy and the
innocent fattery of her belief in
him. He had been prudent, had
made good investments, and, with
bis fathers legacy, was rich enough.
if not exceedingly so. When he
had passed his forty-ffth birthday
his mother died as gently as she de-
served to do, mildly giving up life
which had been tranquil one which
had been lived, perhaps, not in the
highest air, but had been very
sweet and wholesome in its mar
row, guarded sphere. Sebastian felt
her loss as good sons ought but
lie had great consolation, which he
repeated constantly to himself-he had
done his duty throughout; he had
made her happy. In this, as in other
respects, he had nothing to reproach
himself with.
He did not exhibit his full number OF
pictures at the next Academy exhihi-
ton but rumor put about that he
was giving up, that he had painted him
self out. reused him to great energy
and determination to disabuse the
public mind of so absurd an idea and
the year following lie worked so indus
triously at covering his large canvases
that his wife trembied for his health.
che dreaded bis falling a martyr to
the demands of his art but Sebss-
tian was not an exhausting muse
he had none of the irritability,
the restlessness, the fits OF Incidence,
the dependency that genius knows.
That genius of his, in which he himself
and Maryland no one else i'll the
world-so devoutly believed, was only
talent dressed up, only the fatal ia
ter-long since dead in n garret-had
decried in his student days. And talent
is not exhausting; it has none OF the
maddening demands, the fierce contra
Gictions of genius it goes hand in hand
very well with industry and wealth.
What truly awful picture Whose
is it And what is it supposed TO
represent ?"
One young art student put this ques
ton to another in the Academy of only
IA few years since, as they paused in
front of vast and highly-colored can
YES.
Don't you know? Whose else
could it be?" answered the other. |
laughing. 1.-The inimitable Fellowes,
r. A., of course, though he has rather |
surpassed himself this year. AN Allie
CORY of Life and Death, he calls it.
Blest if / can make out anything but |
a lot of disjointed, sprawling creatures
in Topping drapery. You need never
ask who has painted any particularly |
awful picture-saf to find it's an Il. A.,
and generally Fellowes."
An elder man joined them at the mo-
ment-a rather rough-looking, gray
bearded man, with bright eyes an
artist working his way up doggedly by
lbcduS VI lilc eOie VI piCtuiSo "ulCu
Sebastian Fellowes had always de-
nounced.
Don't talk so loud, you fellows !"
he said, tapping one of them on the
shoulder. 81 saw the painter of this
lovely acre o. canvas close by just now.
He generally haunts the neighborhood
of his works of art, and your remarks
might be painful"
"But surely picture exhibited pub
licly on the line is public property, aud
| shouldn't have thought, Mr.. Murray,
that yon would be so very tender over
old Fellowes. Aren't you and he at
daggers DRAWN"
AVE But somehow I've a sort Of
compassion for him this exhibition is
rather pathetic to me. He has got SO
hopelessly past his age, and he goes on
believing in himself and thinking that
others do so, too besides, HIS really
a good sort of worthy soul. and he looks
haggard and altered. He's lost all his
complacent dignity. Some one says
that his wife died after long illness
while he was painting that poor old
daub-that figures taken from her,
they say"
The three moved on talking They
did not notice a tall man, who leaned
on the rail near the big pictare, with
his head down. A good many people
might have failed to recognize Sebas-
tian FellowCs, once so sleek. prosper
Gus, stately; he had grown thin, gray.
haggard-lookIDg, all at once. A year
and half ago, the discovery that his
wife-his other self, his Mary, who
adored him and was to him the pearl OF
ell womankind, in spite of her fifty
years and faded prettiness, in spite OF
her gray hairs and the altered
lines of her once plump and comely
feufe-that she was marked out for
death; that few short years at most,
perhaps months, OF growing torture
would end the happy communion be-
tween them, unspoiled, undisturbed
for almost thirty years, which seemed
but day for the love they bore each
other; this knowledge, the cruel ira
gedy'of swiftly oveItaking fate, crushed
all the happiness out OF the husbands
life, and brought suddenly upon
him the certainty of hopeless
woe. He kept it to himself, as a